The Marquis Is Innocent - 162.1

Chapter 162.1 The Grand Finale (1)

That night the moon was bright, and the sea was calm. The warship left the island that night, and under the guidance of an experienced officer, dozens of sailors rowed the oars and drove the ship towards the land at an even speed.

The islanders who boarded the boat together had already settled in. They looked at the young man’s heroic back in the distance with awe, and the women coaxed their children, trying not to make any noise. Their faces that are haggard due to the hardship release a hopeful look.

From yesterday to this moment, only a short day and night, but they had experienced a lifetime of ups and downs. Thus, they knew that this man who brought them back to their hometown would be the world’s new king.

These people lived on the island for several years and had never heard of Marquis of Yan Wei Shao’s name. But out of intuition, they believed that this young ruler who was willing to stop the siege would be able to bring them the stability that they longed for.

How could they not feel happy and encouraged?

……

There was nothing more to do. Wei Shao told Lei Yan and the others to disperse, and he returned to his cabin. He stood before the porthole and looked up at the starry sky, lost in thought for a long time.

……

T/N : Wei Shao’s dream of past life.

Finally, Yongdu was broke, and the Emperor fled to Shu City. But how to stop Wei Shao from unifying the world?

The last city also finally broke by him. When his soldiers occupied the city and celebrated their victory, someone reported that the Emperor had killed himself in the palace.

Corpses fell all over the place by his feet, the stench of blood floated in the air, the premises were burning with unextinguished fires, smoke rolled out, and fearful cries of those captured citizens filled his ears.

He had long been accustomed to all of these. Surrounded by heavily armored soldiers, he entered the bloody palace.

Several dead women in colorful clothes lie in a pool of blood on the ground, and a pair of dead women and men lie side by side on the couch.

A trembling old eunuch kneeling in the pool of blood said in a quivering, dissonant voice that this pair of men and women was the Emperor, Liu Yan, and his empress, Miss Qiao.

After ordering his trusted eunuch to kill all the concubines, Liu Yan killed the empress with his own hands and killed himself with poison. Liu Yan’s eyes were closed tightly, his face was pale, and his facial muscles were abnormal.

He stared at the deceased Liu Yan for a moment, then swept over to the woman beside him.

His dead wife’s sister. From the Qiao family, whom he hates.

Her palace clothes on her body are neat. Her left chest had a sharp blade wound. The blood was still dripping, solidified into purple and black color, and soaked the gorgeous brocade clothes. It seemed that she experienced a stab in her heart before her death. The stab was precise and pierced through her back. However, compared to her husband’s painfully twisted expression, this dead Qiao woman’s expression was unusually calm. She only closed her eyes, her eyelashes lowered, as if she had fallen asleep. Even though she had already died for a few moments, and her body was cold and stiff, she still looked beautiful. The blood-stained wound on her chest made her beauty even more poignant and sad instead of damaging her stunning face.

Enough to impress the heart of the most hard-hearted person in this world. However, in his eyes, she was only slightly similar to his wife Da Qiao’s beautiful face and then withdrew.

His expression was indifferent, without any semblance of compassion.

He turned around and left the palace premises under the suppressed fearful gaze of the old eunuch behind him. He was only thirty years old but was already at the top. Today, he cleared the last obstacle on his path. So far, he already shed all his enemies. He wanted them to die, one by one, under his hands. In this world, no one can compete with him. The beautiful rivers and mountains of every inch of the king’s land are all for him to have.

He should have been excited at this moment. His soldiers celebrated the victory, and their wild cheers still seemed to resound in his ears. But for some reason, he did not feel the slightest excitement.

Perhaps it was because he had already experienced too many such broken cities and victories before and had long been numb. Clearing the resistant Emperor was only a goal of his. Now that he accomplished his goal, he seemed to feel a trace of bewilderment and even loneliness of having reached the top alone.

Wei Shao strides through the smoky streets of the city, indifferently letting his soldiers kill, burn and even rape to vent their emotions after breaking the city. It was as if he had not heard the agonizing cries and groans of the city’s people, who had helped the dead Emperor resist his arrival and felt that this was the punishment they deserved. It was only on the next day, when his prime minister Gongsun Yang, who had hurriedly arrived at the news, came to dissuade him that he finally gave orders to them to stop.

From the first day of Wei Shao’s ascension to the throne, Great Yan never stopped fighting. After he returned to Luoyang, he appointed capable ministers, opened up tax sources, and filled up the state treasury, which used to fill up military funds to support him in his battle with the Xiongnu.

A few years later, the Great Yan Iron Cavalry finally captured the Xiongnu’s royal court in Dragon City, driving the Xiongnu people who were living there far to the north and completely eliminating the area around Dragon City.

He received beauty one after another in his harem, but no one could get his love. Although he favored them on the dragon bed for some time, the passion soon became cold. As for the Su girl, he crowned her as the queen but never summoned her these past years. He only watched those women fight for his favor coldly. He felt tired of and contempt, and those memories of the teenage years in his mind had long vanished. His youth memories in his heart have long since disappeared. Occasionally, when the night was quiet, he climbed the palace alone, remembering his Grandmother that died many years ago. Then, his cold and hard stone heart slowly soften again. Only at that moment would he feel a brief moment of loneliness. A loneliness that he could not hide. He also knew that if his Grandmother were still alive, she would not want to see him become what he was today. But he could not control himself. His Grandmother was gone, his mother only needed to be honored, the women in the harem could not stop him, and no one in the world could soften his heart, which had been buried by hatred since he was twelve. He needed these constant stimulations and pleasure of conquest.

The year after the pacification of the Xiongnu, he continued to conquest the Western Regions despite the opposition of Gongsun Yang and the courtiers. After several years of conquest, he finally achieved his wish. He managed to take a large part of the western region and integrate it with the territory of Great Yan.

In less than ten years, he had done the great deeds that no monarch before him could do. He made the Great Yan Empire flaunt its power to the four seas. Those praises piled up like snowflakes on his imperial desk, and he had not yet had time to open and read them.

This year, floods from the Yellow River to the northeast of Henan and the southwest of Shandong merged into the Si River and finally entered the Huai River. The torrential flood destroyed countless good fields and people’s houses, while thousands of animals and people died.